I attended a "Squeakfest" a couple of weekends ago. Squeak is a visual,
drag-and-drop programming language... video information about it claims it
is descended from LOGO. It is a free download, open-source program. In the
workshop, I saw a video which described simulated science experiments, and saw
children doing interesting science (and math). It seems to be a cool program to
use for exposing young children to programming, logic, and such mathematical
ideas as vectors, speed, coordinate systems, angles, etc. I'm wondering what
the MathTools community might know about Squeak (a search in both discussions
and the catalog comes up empty). Have any of you used it?

I went home from the workshop and downloaded the program on my home computer.
My 11-year-old daughter started playing with it; today she "taught" my son
how to use the software, and they made a bumper-car simulation. Earlier, my
daughter made a visual "joystick" controller to guide her cloudcar around a
track, then over a mountain. While the car was on the mountain, it made "motor"
noises, but if it left the mountain, it made "chirping" noises. My
"sophisticated" high school students would roll their eyes (in public, at least,
but I bet they would have fun with it in private) at the software, but I'm
interested in seeing how I could use it to improve teaching...

This material is based upon work supported by the
National Science Foundation under Grant DUE-0226284.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Science Foundation.